FreakUSB-1284P 900 MHz, Wireless 802.15.4 USB Dongle v1.0

$34.95

For many developers, the standard Arduino parts start to feel a bit claustrophobic. In many cases, you might need more RAM than the 2 kB in the standard MCU or more flash than the 32 kB for your programs. That's the main reason I designed the FreakUSB-1284P line of devices. It features a whopping 16 kB of RAM and 128 kB of flash. It usually takes a small team of software developers to fill a flash that size.

The FreakUSB-1284P 900M is an Arduino-compatible 900 MHz 802.15.4 USB wireless dongle on steroids. It has 8x the RAM and 6x the flash of a standard Arduino compatible device. You can connect it to PCs or embedded devices like the Raspberry Pi and control other 900 MHz 802.15.4 wireless devices. It's also very handy as a portable wireless 802.15.4 or Zigbee network sniffer.

One of the biggest benefits of using this device is the huge amount of RAM and flash available. Many people use my boards as wireless sniffers and protocol analyzers but constantly have their memory overwhelmed because of the ATMega328P's small amount of RAM (2 kB). This device sports an Atmel ATMega1284P which still has the same AVR core as the standard Arduino but has an amazing 16 kB of RAM and 128 kB of flash. You can collect large amounts of data, process large strings, store data & strings in unused flash, or do many things that you normally wouldn't be able to do with a standard Arduino compatible MCU.

Another interesting feature is that this board comes with a 7.3728 MHz crystal instead of an 8 MHz. crystal. This allows you to get exact baudrate divisors for standard serial speeds. Many Linux and Mac applications only support standard UART baudrates (i.e. B115200 or B230400) as defined in termios. With a 7.3728 MHz crystal, you can max out any of the standard supported baudrates.

This device is also fully compatible with all 900 MHz Freakduino products so you can design your device, throw it on to a shield, put it on a Freakduino, and then control it via your PC or Raspberry Pi with this dongle.

This product was designed specifically to be small and portable so that its easy to carry around anywhere. The board also sports an FTDI USB/Serial bridge which is well supported on all Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms. It's completely compatible with the Arduino IDE and supported by the chibiArduino wireless software so development is a breeze.

In addition to all of that, this device also supports the standard data rate of 250 kbps as well as data rates of 500 kbps, 1 Mbps, and 2 Mbps if extra speed is needed.